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The journey, not the arrival, matters the voyage, not the landing.

Paul Theroux

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Paul Theroux
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 10
Film Writer
Novelist
Writer
Medford
Massachusetts
Paul Edward Theroux
Matter
Arrival
Arrivals
Voyage
Voyages
Landing
Satisfaction
Matters
Journey

More quotes by Paul Theroux

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Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.
Paul Theroux
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I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
Paul Theroux
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No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived: this is the emotion that makes me want to travel. It is one of the greatest reasons to go anywhere.
Paul Theroux
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Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.
Paul Theroux
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Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.
Paul Theroux
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It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
Paul Theroux
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The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
Paul Theroux
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The man who is tired of London is tired of looking for a parking space
Paul Theroux
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Writers are painful friends, and they are seldom friendly with others. They are insecure in the presence of other writers. Composers of certain kinds of music are the same--tormented and intolerant. Yet some arts not only make the artist social but make him depend upon sociability in order to succeed. Painting is one.
Paul Theroux
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The Colombians are good-tempered people. They are used to waiting for buses that are late, used to riding buses and trains that do not arrive.
Paul Theroux
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Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.
Paul Theroux
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It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.
Paul Theroux
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Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.
Paul Theroux
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Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.
Paul Theroux
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I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.
Paul Theroux
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Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.
Paul Theroux
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Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.
Paul Theroux
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Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
Paul Theroux
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Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control.
Paul Theroux
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I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.
Paul Theroux